Crimson Gauntlet: Crimson Gauntlet, #1

By I.O. Adler

• "Outstanding, intriguing. Dark, grim, fast paced, nerve wracking!"
• "A riot to read!"
• "Read it in a single sitting."
• "An exciting addition to the LitRPG field with loads of character development and interaction, I found this a difficult book to put down."
• "Humor, action, suspense, mysteries and twists!"
• "Crimson Gauntlet certainly will appeal to fans of both the LitRPG and apocalyptic subgenres of sci-fi. It sticks the ending and opens up an intriguing world to explore further."

 

Even as the world burns, the game is everything…

 

When a wave of monsters attack the town of Bell Park, Eddie Rush has no idea the invasion is an introduction to a new interactive experience.

 

Crimson Gauntlet Online wasn't supposed to go live for weeks. But for Eddie and his group of gamer friends, the chilling realization dawns on them that the promised game is responsible for the spreading destruction and death.

 

If Eddie wants to survive, he'll need to learn the rules, and fast. Because Crimson Gauntlet isn't taking prisoners.

 

Full of action, dark humor, and mystery, Crimson Gauntlet is perfect for fans of Dungeon Crawler Carl, Ready Player One, and Robopocalypse.

 

From the award-winning author of Shadows of Mars and The Seraph Engine.

Discover a new favorite series in this post-apocalyptic LitRPG adventure.

Grab your copy and enjoy the ride!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lucas Ross Publishing
• Release date: Dec 10, 2022
• ISBN: 9798224718184

Book preview

Crimson Gauntlet

An Apocalyptic Lit RPG Adventure

by

I.O. Adler

Level Zero

1

Eddie Rush’s First Rule of Winning? Never be late for a game.

Guild law, and something I enforced as a guild officer.

Here I was, running behind schedule by hours and gunning my scooter out of the Golden State Care Home parking lot onto the boulevard.

Forty patients in need of a paratransit shuttle driver, and my evening replacement was a no-show. Mr. Montgomery, my daily regular, had been late following his periodontal appointment and was in a chatty mood, making my last pick up and drop off go long.

On Wednesday raid night.

Of course, every night but Tuesday was raid night, but you get the picture.

A hundred players were waiting, with twenty more looking to fill the slot of anyone not equipped, buffed, prepped on strategy, and on their toon in front of the instance gate ready to rock the house.

In this case, Night World’s third expansion pack, Grave Warden’s Curse, and the Twilight Crypt’s third boss, Covadine the Mad. Our guild, Grace Over Pressure, was hitting its head on what should have been a straightforward spank-and-tank fight, but the wraith stage and the swarming insect damage were taxing our healing group’s ability to keep up.

I was the top damage-dealing archer and guild officer by the grace of having been with the group since its last game. Long of tooth, and currently short on time.

Traffic was mercifully light, thanks to the evacuation orders.

My scooter maxed out at thirty-five. I adjusted my glasses to better see my dashboard clock. Quarter to eight, and it would take me twenty minutes to get home. My game rig needed a restart and had just finished downloading an operating system update, along with Tuesday’s game patch.

Screwed. So screwed.

Laura, aka Rosette, the mass-buffing and disease-curing level-eighty Druid, was a guild leader who tolerated zero crap and demanded punctuality.

Was that her texting me now?

I was heading for a yellow light. No way to make it, and while the Bell Park PD was noticeably absent from the roads for the past week, I knew if I pressed my luck, I’d catch the red and get pulled over and have to deal with a traffic stop and a last fatal hit to my commercial driver’s license. I braked hard.

Text to voice over my helmet speaker. Message from: Laura.

She was going to be chewing me out for not being logged into the game thirty minutes ago to herd the cats. Even a guild of dedicated players determined to graduate from cutting edge to bleeding edge with new content required a firm hand.

Anything less, and our main competition guild-wise on our server, Bellum Cultura, would leave us in the dust. They beat Covadine the Mad last Saturday and took down the Platinum Abomination on their first try.

Server’s down, my phone said in its ever-pleasant husky woman’s voice. Meetup at Tasty’s. Did you get your package?

What package? But that was it from Laura.

Email, I said and my phone obliged.

Seventeen messages, mostly junk, but one from Janus Brand International.

Did You Receive Your Package? The email header was a long confidentiality clause followed by a yes/no toggle waiting for my response.

The second email of note was from the parcel service. Package delivered two hours ago.

The light turned green. I sped forward at a measured clip. The thought I had received my package from Janus made me giddy. The sensation was instantly offset by the realization my roommate had signed for the most important delivery of my entire life.

2

Lawrence-Not-Larry lay sprawled on our couch, the TV blasting a screeching K-pop ballad as an anime show’s credit roll scrolled by. He wore his headphones on as he tapped on his tablet, smashing fruit with a virtual sledgehammer.

Larry?

He muttered something unintelligible. The place reeked of...well, Larry. I kept to my room, mostly. It’s where my gaming rig was set up, wedged between my futon and the small closet holding the rest of my worldly belongings.

Hot and stuffy. Typical for a midsummer evening. No AC, and the fans we owned barely made the air breathable.

I checked my room. No package on the futon amongst the rumpled sheets or on my desk. My ceiling fan whirled above my head, shuddering as if it were a mad machine waiting to drop down and chop heads.

My eyes were almost watering as I leaned in close enough so Larry couldn’t ignore me. My package?

He grunted. Made a vague gesture to his left.

The clutter on the small table was mostly ignored mail neither of us could bother to gather and take down to the recycling container. On top of it was a battered box large enough to fit a pair of shoes. Taped, with labels declaring Fragile and Handle with Care!

Guaranteed to earn an extra punting by the delivery anthropoids.

My heart was in my throat as I grabbed the package, turning it end-over-end and discovering gaps in the cardboard along the corners.

This was the piece of hardware I’d need to make it into Janus Brand International’s alpha test, and it had been stomped upon.

It was with no small amount of trepidation I used a grimy butter knife to pry apart the tape along the box’s end.

A second box waited inside. Pristine white, unblemished, intact. I pulled it out like it was Hanukkah and this was the last gift I would ever receive.

The sealed tape had a reflective hologram. A laminated tracking chip popped away as I pried the box apart. A mummified bundle the size of a grapefruit waited inside. More tape, more labels.

This product is proprietary hardware for authorized users only. If you have received this, you are responsible for the hardware’s use as mandated by your confidentiality agreement. Violating your agreement or sharing details, photos, or design specification of the enclosed prototype will result in

Blah-blah-blah. I had skimmed the NDAs as thoroughly as I would any end-user license. JBI had invited me to its new game, Crimson Gauntlet, a virtual sim, and I would have sold my soul to be a part of it.

Speaking of End User License Agreements:

Use of this product constitutes an agreement to the terms of use. Some users may experience dizziness, seizure, and light sensitivity. Other side effects may be possible. We encourage you to consult a physician before playing.

I owned a VR set already. I skipped the rest.

A third silver label sounded less threatening.

Game release day TBD but soon! Be ready!

Find it? Larry called from the couch.

I ignored him. With the care of a surgeon, I stripped the last layer away.

A wire headset, but closer to a pair of reading glasses. Smaller than the bulky eye coverings of the VR gaming rigs available on retail. Skimpy, actually. Hooks around both ears, a copper-colored frame, impossibly-thin lenses, and the tiniest rectangular housing behind the right lens.

That’s it?

The small block was solid, perhaps holding a battery, a receiver, or both.

They fit perfectly over my glasses. But what was the point?

I went through the package again. Where were the earpieces, the video display, the rest of it? The email didn’t mention a second package. No paperwork besides the stickers.

It was all wrong. The next iteration of gaming was supposed to be full sensory. I was expecting a haptic ensemble, like a SCUBA suit. Crimson Gauntlet was supposed to be less an online experience and more a drop-in-and-forget-your-old-life sim, with monsters and loot and quests galore, if the early hype was to be believed.

The third label’s last line? You won’t believe the life you’re about to live.

I took the flimsy headset off and gave them a last look before stuffing them back into the box. Yeah, right.

Huh? my roommate murmured from the couch.

Nothing, Larry.

I slammed the door on the way out.

3

Tasty’s Diner popped on my map app, but I didn’t need directions.

I pulled into the lot twenty-five minutes later. Enough cars and light. A lot of vehicle break-ins lately, according to the other employees at the retirement home.

The diner was the place you’d go to soak up a late-night drinking session, or take a cheap date who deserved better than the usual fast-food selections every town north, south, and east of here had two of along the highway.

For an online guild, having six of us living so close was a two-edged sword. We’d become friends of sorts, even though we rarely met up. Too busy online. Chewy and Bennett both had families. How their wives dealt with a nightly raid schedule was a mystery. Kermit and Shadow had moved closer recently. Both worked tech, and both had found apartments close enough to the San Francisco Bay Area so they could drive in, but far enough away so they could afford rent.

And Laura?

She lived on an old farm just north of Bell Park and hadn’t shared enough about what she did when not playing.

We had a seventh guild member not too far away who had made a few of our meetups. Kip. Somewhere up in the hills east of Sacramento on Highway 50, heading towards Tahoe. Kip had been our top healer until his death in a car crash a year ago.

The door to the diner stuck as I opened it. The air smelled heavy of bacon, fried food, and powdered sugar. Syrup in five flavors waited on each table, and a display case of pies and donuts stood prominently next to the Please Wait to be Seated sign.

There they were.

My guildmates sat with coffee and pie, huddled in a corner booth.

A handful of diners occupied a few tables and the counter, but it was a light crowd for a place once so popular with slackers and retirees. And then there were the evacuations. While not mandatory, the Army and the Sheriff Department posted blinking road signs and ran sound cars encouraging everyone to leave.

The radio message mentioned spiking radiation levels in Redding. Sacramento was next, the doomsayers said, and inevitably Davis, Bell Park, and a dozen other communities. But if Redding and the northern third of California were contaminated from whatever happened in Seattle and Portland, where were the refugees?

Fake news.

My mom in Colma kept texting me to come down. My replies were always the same.

Maybe next weekend.

Besides, my boss needed me. So did my guild. Staying with my mom and her new husband was out of the question and I doubted I’d find a crisis center where I could set up my rig. None of my fellow diehards were leaving, either.

At the table, Laura was holding court. Not in a bad way, just the queen bee doing her thing, with an infectious confidence and passion.

...I posted the video on our forum. Bellum Cultura used the DoT bug after the server reset to bring down the Platinum Abomination. Let’s see them try that Saturday after their instance resets. We stay heavy on bleeds, spam-heal the melee, and have all the ranged stick close to Hagar.

Hagar, my toon’s name.

Shadow glanced up from his phone. Nice of you to show up.

Dark eye liner, shiny raven-black long hair, and a gray trench coat. Heavily creamed coffee and apple pie waited before him. He had a walnut brown Messenger bag tucked against his lap. A fresh bandage high on one cheek.

Cut yourself shaving?

Something like that. He scooched over so I could sit. He was back on his phone, pinging away at a game with a zombie head eating babies.

Laura glanced at me with her green eyes. You’re late.

Sorry. So...the Platinum Abomination?

Yeah. No one’s tried to stack up for cover behind the mining cart. You keep heals-over-time on the ranged, pop your Major Succors early to get past the cooldown for stage two, and we grind him down below half by the time the guard rush begins.

Kermit and Chewy both were mostly done with their pie. Sweet potato and blueberry, respectively.

Bennett, the big married guy who always sat next to Laura, dabbed crumbs from his wispy beard. What about the lava surge? It hits the edge of the map by the cart every three minutes.

Laura nodded patiently. Yeah. Timer’s in the UI. Formation collapses in before running back out for cover.

Means we get hit by bone shards.

That’s what potions are for.

Shadow didn’t look up from his device. And invulnerability glyphs. The trace of a smile dimpled his face.

Not everyone has that, Bennett said.

I do.

Kermit snort-laughed. The oldest member of our guild, around forever, and spoke with a British accent I always thought sounded fake. Grinded two months for a trinket.

I like to win.

We all do. Premature to worry about the Platinum Abomination if we can’t take down Covadine.

Laura turned her coffee cup in her hands. We’ll get him. We all just need to focus. Maybe a night off is what we need to get our heads on straight.

The server came by and I ordered coffee. My hands were jittery enough, but what the hell. I cleaned the lenses of my glasses and considered the specials board behind the counter. I wasn’t really hungry. When she brought the thick mug of java, I added my sugars.

Laura tilted her cup in Kermit’s direction, and then toward Bennett. We all clinked.

To lost players, and the toons we knew and loved.

To Kip, Chewy said.

Manabanana, Shadow corrected, remembering Kip’s character name.

I was late for the toast. After an attempted sip, I set my surprisingly scalding cup of coffee down.

The topic changed. Chewie complained about his wife and Bennett commiserated. Neither woman played Night World. Laura was posting a group photo to our forum, while Kermit polished off his sweet potato pie. Shadow played his game. The zombie made a yum-yum sound after every fifth baby head.

I took out the glasses. The wave of disappointment couldn’t be overstated. What knucklehead packed these things into my box instead of the VR hardware that was supposed to drop me into gaming nirvana?

No On switch, no label, no ports, and no instructions.

They looked like an art piece designed by a high schooler taking first-year metal shop and discovering the wonders of solder. Too industrial for steampunk. Solid enough. Light as a feather.

I slipped them on over my own glasses. Something pinched the skin on the side of my head. I tore them off and felt the housing behind the right lens. Had the hard edge cut me? A dot of red from the side of my face.

Shadow lowered his phone. What have you got there?

It arrived from JBI. Supposed to get the Crimson Gauntlet VR goggles but all they sent was this.

Chewie was wiping his pie plate with his finger. I got those too. That’s the hardware. It’s the first part of whatever they’re sending.

There was no other package. It’s some kind of mistake. These aren’t anything.

Voice low, Shadow pointed at the glasses. Did you miss the confidentiality terms? Those aren’t meant to be seen in public. You’re not supposed to take pictures of it, show it off, leave it at a bar, or talk about them. With anyone.

We’re all part of the alpha.

Your funeral. JBI lawyers are no joke.

I got mine too, Bennett said. I locked them in my office.

See? Even Bennett is smart enough to follow basic instructions. Maybe he won’t be the first to die in tomorrow’s raid. Unlike last night.

Bennett smirked before flipping Shadow off.

After rubbing the glasses in a failed search for whatever had pricked my head, I slipped them on again. It’s not like these things are the next big phone. No one here cares. And I think they sent us the wrong device. There’s no power, no interface to bridge with my gaming rig, no—

Motion outside.

The diner window reflected too much interior light to see clearly, but an orange glowing shape darted past in the parking lot. Glasses off again, I squinted. The shape was gone. A dog or something, perhaps with a glowstick attached to its collar. Whatever it was, it had vanished beyond the first row of parked cars.

Laura scowled. Shadow’s right. You don’t want to show off those things and have someone post a picture. It won’t be good for you and it won’t be good for us.

No one’s going to share anything, I said sheepishly.

Maybe not one of us, but you never know.

Kermit chuckled. ‘Cutting Edge Tech Marvel Unveiled at Bell Park Dive.’ But Eddie’s right. There’s more hardware coming. Janus, in all their wisdom, decided two boxes would be better than one. Best to tamp down your dreams, my friends. I’ve been through a few alpha tests and I’m not holding my breath it won’t be anything more than a pixel walk through a grassy field. Let’s brush up for tomorrow, shall we? Less sucking, as the kids say.

We talked about strategy.

Could Bennett respec his arcane talents to improve his to-hit rating? We had three other light mages, none present, who underperformed and needed better gear. Or they needed to be swapped out with our hungry second-tier raiders who were less experienced with the bosses in the Twilight Crypt.

Chewie and Kermit went back and forth on reorganizing the melee DPS into two squads and sticking close to the Platinum Abomination during the third stage or falling back to the mining cart for a big heal during the last phase of the fight.

As he tapped his clean plate, Chewie kept repeating the same thing. We slack on bleeds or he regenerates.

Bosh. We die, we wipe, Kermit countered. We have to retreat to get in healing range.

This assumes we even make it to the third stage, Bennett said.

Laura watched them bicker. Serene, intent, and gripping her mug tight. She wore a camo tank top and her arms showed her inks. The text of the Second Amendment in scrollwork along her right forearm. Below it, Liberal and I vote. But vote was struck through, and the word shoot scrawled in next to it. Her left arm had a diagram of a woman’s reproductive system wrapped in barbwire.

No changes to the plan, she said. The table fell silent. Strategy’s up on the forum. Melee stays in range in a single group. Forget the mining cart. We mess with the strategy now, we’ll be back at the first boss wondering why we can’t progress. We’re going to make it to the third stage, and the Abomination’s going down.

She had everyone’s attention except me and Shadow. Still on his phone, his zombie head kept eating babies. I had the glasses near my face and was staring through the lenses.

The two of us knew the fight. We weren’t the ones who had been caught in the open and died. I had posted the notes while Shadow had edited the instruction video with big arrows and labels so everyone would know what to do.

Motion again, this time near my scooter. I had pulled it up into the gloom behind the electric vehicle charging station. Was someone sitting on it?

I edged out of the booth. Excuse me. Someone is messing with my ride.

4

Bennett followed me out the door. He had his cigarettes and lighter in hand. I needed to get up. My ass is killing me.

As the door swung shut behind us, I noticed the streetlights beyond the parking lot were out. The freeway was dark too. Cars still raced along, their headlights bright.

Tasty’s Diner was up on the frontage road off I-80. The Chevron and Jack-in-the-box at the crossroads should have been beacons but it was as if the night had swallowed them.

I headed across the lot towards the charging stations.

Bennett was right behind me. Hey, Eddie? I know this is out of the blue. I was thinking about asking Laura out.

You’re married.

Not really. I mean, Sheila and I have separate bedrooms. She sees other men. We stay together for the kids, you know? If I asked Laura to coffee, would it...would it make it weird?

Too dark to see clearly. I turned on my phone’s flashlight and directed the beam around. Nothing. Imagining things. Then I noticed my scooter’s dashboard console was smashed and the battery wires in front of the motor severed.

A pool of coolant poured from beneath a hatchback parked beside the closest charging station. The front body panel above the tire had been peeled away and the hood was bent. I got closer and confirmed it too had loose wires. Something had wrecked its engine.

Bennett followed behind me and rambled as he sucked on a menthol cigarette. "I mean, you and her and Kip would sometimes do those early breakfasts before